


of paintbrushes and endless roads

by spnhell



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cartographer!Kili, Durincest, Explorer!Fili, M/M, sort of Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-09-16
Packaged: 2018-04-21 00:36:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4808180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spnhell/pseuds/spnhell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the <a href="http://gatheringfiki.tumblr.com/post/127826595685/summer-fandom-raffle-exchange-prompts-masterlist">Summer Fandom Raffle Exchange</a>, prompt #104: Mapmakers.</p><p> <i> The flecks of blue and white look at home on his skin, each drop a mark of his trade; a rainstorm of colour that never quite washes clean.</i></p><p>In which Fili is an explorer and Kili the cartographer he left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of paintbrushes and endless roads

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks as always to my wonderful friend and beta [Anathema-Cat](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Anathema_Cat/pseuds/Anathema_Cat), and to [durinspinces](http://archiveofourown.org/users/durinsprinces/pseuds/durinsprinces), for her beautiful words that shaped the end of this fic, and who never stops inspiring me to be better.

Durin & Co has been a family trade as long as Kili can remember.

Opened by his grandfather’s grandfather, the family has been in the business of exploration and cartography since the wars of the Ages, when the edges of the world had widened and a demand had risen for its corners to be drawn out for the resettlement programs.

Nowadays, they've pretty much covered it all: the great cities of men and the deep forests that had seemed never ending at first; the sources of the rivers that ran out to the Belagaer; the tall mountains which had been crossed to open their eyes to the world beyond. All have been discovered, noted, flown by raven, and then painted down for generations to follow; every parchment signed with a flick of wrist and a smear of black ink that proclaims just one thing:  _Durin._

There are no others that have ventured as far as the Durin’s, no others deemed up to the task of cataloguing the world to be shared between it’s peoples. They are reaching the most barren widths of the world now, the exploration team currently mapping North of Ered Mithrin, venturing out into the unknown lands of the Forodwaith; Kili’s paints taking on new hues of silver and ice that he’s never had cause to find before.

When he was just an apprentice, Kili had delighted in creating maps filled with the tiniest of details, his nimble hands touching beauty to the pages that were well within their rights to just sit and garner dust. Instead they became works of art under his hands, revered not just for his trade, but for their own mastery as well.

It unsettles him to be staring at the top of his page, now; blank and waiting to be filled with the unknown. He wonders if this is how Fili feels, staring off into the white mists that he’s described so vividly in his letters.

Setting down his brush, Kili listens out for the tinkling of the old bell above the door as he heads towards the back of the workshop, paint-stained fingertips trailing across the wooden panelling on the wall. The flecks of blue and white look at home on his skin, each drop a mark of his trade; a rainstorm of colour that never quite washes clean. That never quite has a chance too before it begins again.

He skirts around the desks scattered in the back, most of them overspilling with paints and brushes and reams of parchment. To anyone else it would look like unorganised chaos back here, but to Kili, it is home, and it doesn’t take him long to efficiently rifle through and find the brush he’s after; the trails of dried paint stained on it’s side as much a map of it’s adventures as the maps that it’s helped create.

For Kili knows the feel of every brush in his workshop, the weight of it in his hand, the colours it’s touched and the pathways it’s walked. He knows which cities each one has visited, which route they took across the paper to get there. He wonders if he himself will ever walk them in more than just ink on the page.

Rolling the wood between his fingers, he heads back to his desk, eyes darting to check that no one has entered whilst he was distracted. He has to duck beneath the gores hanging out to dry; varying shades of teal and cerulean swaying gently in the breeze that drifts in through the open window.

The workshop remains empty, however; a single shaft of light streaming through the window his only company. It gleams through the jars crowding the windowsill, refracting around the room casting it in an almost otherworldly light. Kili can’t help smile softly as he traces it, the lone beam that’s sought out an old map laying across a cast aside table, illuminating a distant location.  _The Shire._

Kili can still remember the way Fili had described the place, his usual neat and formal scrawl reduced to a slanted mess, as though he’d been in a hurry to get the words out before he forgot how they felt in his mouth. He’d gushed about the folk there, their ways and nuances, the rolling hills of their land and the discovery that there were more shades of green than he’d dreamt were possible.

Kili had spent all night in the workshop mixing, high off caffeine and paint fumes and the feeling in his gut whenever a new letter arrived. Sage and emerald, viridian and jade, the subtleties of colour an endless fascination to him; his own endless quest to find every tint, every shade.

It’s nothing like Fili’s quests, tales of adventure and wanderlust that are so fleeting in their action but so permanent on the parchment Kili holds in his hand, the soft dents from the heavy strokes of Fili’s pen already imprinted across Kili’s fingerprints. His letters always embody more than just words to Kili; Kili who knows art like he knows how to breathe, who can read between the lines and tell the mood Fili was in when he wrote the words based solely on the tilt of the letters. The way the links between letters falter when excitement takes over from formality. The way a slight press of pen implies that Fili had lingered there, leaving behind a ghost of a thought for Kili to chase in the lonely nights.

He likes to imagine how Fili would look when he wrote them, what memories he was reliving and how they played out across his face. He wonders how he looks now, almost 8 years into his first tour.

The exploration team had never appealed to Kili, who was always more than happy to stay behind with his paints and oils. Yet sometimes, he can’t help but wish he’d gone too, that he and Fili had shared the world through more than just scribbled letters here and there.

He sighs, setting aside his brush and dropping his head into his hands. _You were always going to stay behind._

For the first few years, Kili never regretted that decision. They were only fleeting, those moments where his wanderlust would take over and fill him with want.

But now… now his paints have taken on darker shades, more deep and violent than he’s used too. An entirely different kind of desire roils inside of him, his works becoming stark and sharp and brilliant in his need to let it out, to get it all out on the paper in front of him in the hopes that that feeling will leave him be.

It’s a desire for more than words on a page. It’s a desire for those same words to be breathed onto his skin; to be traced with a touch of hand or tongue. It’s a desire for his perfect shade of blue to be staring back at him from more than just his tabletop.

It’s a desire that’s burned a hole in his chest he’d never even realised was there before. A desire that’s been burning a hole in his pocket ever since the day the letter arrived 6 months ago.

* * *

Fili had fallen in love over crackling fires and through squinted eyes. Through smeared fingerprints of taupe, crimson, cyan, saffron. He had fallen in love with rushed words, and descriptions of sunlight filtering through windows. Descriptions of the world passing by and the seasons changing, with the only constant the quiet of a studio.

Fili had fallen in love as he crossed the Shire and found that for every shade of green he longed for a matching shade of brown; copper like the chestnuts in the Mirkwood, or dark like the rich chocolates found in the towns of men. He had fallen in love with the people of the rolling hills for their laughter and happiness, so similar to that which he had left behind.

He’d fallen in love on yearning nights, when the skies were clear and the stars were mapped out before him. Fallen in love by tracing the paths between them, drawing out his own maps, hoping that perhaps far away there was another looking out for them, seeing the same stars that Fili saw.

Fili had fallen in love when he was over a thousand miles away, with nothing but the empty skies to quell the storm in his heart. The empty skies that for every step he took across the Earth, every step that took him closer to _home_ , lulled him into the false hope that no news meant good news. The empty skies that were a stark reminder of the fact that Kili had never replied to his letter, that no raven was appearing on the horizon. The empty skies that mocked him with their metaphor, for they represented the emptiness Fili had felt ever since he’d reached the Edge all those long months ago. 

* * *

_My dearest Kili,_

_We reached the Edge today._

_It was like nothing else, the whole world just dropping away into a chasm of nothingness. It was almost the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, the silence and the silver. And yet, I cannot bring myself to describe it to you._

_It is bleak and stark and white, and nothing like you. Nothing like your world and your laughter._

_It reminds me of myself; the depth of my sorrow to be so parted from you for all these years. The realisation that at the end of all things there is no sense of fulfilment, no relief at reaching this final corner._

_There is only the emptiness, the howl of the wind that reminds me how I have not heard your voice for over 8 years; the sheets of white that tell me how I have not seen true colour since I left you behind in your studio, that the splashes of paint on your letters are more vivid and bright to me than anything else I’ve seen._

_I wonder about your hands, if they are still as stained with ink as they always were. I wonder about your eyes, if you have yet dedicated the time to find their shade, if you have studied your paints as fully as I have studied every tree, every bird; anything to see that colour again._

_I always thought that this was what I wanted, to reach out and fill in every corner of the map. Of_ your _maps. And I have enjoyed my quests Kili; often I wish you could have seen the things I have seen. But I understand why you stayed behind, and I can’t help but wonder if you haven’t, would I still feel the way I feel now?_

_Would I still long to reach out across the world just so I could hear your voice again?_

_Standing on the Edge of the End, I suppose I know now that all these years, I have not been chasing. I have only been running. Running from your light in an attempt to find my own, in an attempt to see everything that could be seen in the veinless hope it might erase your face from my dreams._

_Perhaps it is now that I have seen the whole world, that I am finally able to tell you that my whole world was left behind in a studio, 8 years ago. And that I would happily never see any of the world again, if only it meant that I could be there with you now._

_It is cold here Kili, but the thought of you has always brought me warmth even on the bitterest of nights. I write this letter by the light of the fire, the flickering oranges and ambers a pale imitation of the glint in your eyes._

_I can only hope now that this reaches you in welcome. That that glint is there when you read these words. That perhaps you have shared the same feelings that have become my companion over these lonely years._

_Yours, as always,_

_Fili._

* * *

__

Kili’s out back again, searching for more parchment, when the bell over the door finally rings. Smiling softly, he shakes his head in amusement. 

“I’m out the back Bofur!” he calls. “Took you bloody long enough,” he adds, muttering under his breath. 

An unnatural silence fills the air, Kili righting himself from under a desk with a frown of his face. 

“Bofur?” 

Hairs raise on the back of his neck when again there’s no response. The hanging gores drift in his peripheral in the slight breeze coming from the open window, their dancing shadows the only movement in the room. 

Huffing, he heads back out the front. “Look Bo, I know you like your little jokes but this isn’t fun-”

The words die in Kili’s throat.

He pauses in the doorway, breath hitching as he takes in the sight before him. Takes in the sight of his brother standing in the middle of the studio, _Kili’s_ studio, looking more lost than he has ever seen him. 

It’s not right, for Fili to be lost. Fili is the explorer, the adventurer, the one who ventures off the path and never looks back. 

“You didn’t reply to my letter.” 

His voice is rough, deeper than Kili remembers. The words rush out on a shaky exhale; hopeful, pleading. 

“I… I didn’t…” Kili stumbles, throat catching. He’d never expected this, to wake up one morning and have his entire world change. He thought he still had time.

“I didn’t know what to say.” 

Kili’s voice is ashen with the admission and Fili takes a step towards him, broad shoulders filling the space of Kili’s studio, his own light and warmth drawing Kili in despite the setting sun casting shadows around the room.

“I’m an artist,” Kili admonishes himself quietly, “I’m an artist and yet I couldn’t find the words.” 

He stares down at his paint splattered shoes, tries to ignore the way his skin tingles as Fili steps closer; close enough that their shadows entwine on the hardwood floor.

Fili reaches out a finger to tilt Kili’s face up, Kili’s sharp intake of breath the only sound as finally, after all those years, he discovers the most perfect shade of blue. A shade unlike anything he’s ever been able to replicate. 

“What would you have said if you could have?” Fili asks gently, same eyes shining with hope.

Kili can’t answer, too untrusting of his own voice. Instead he reaches up, lets his fingers trace the planes of his brothers’ face. Fili’s a blank canvas; new territory to be explored and chartered.

He leans forward, closing the last few inches between them as he brushes a kiss across Fili’s lips. His hesitation lasts only a moment before he feels Fili respond with fervour, his hands dropping to Kili’s hips and backing them against a table. 

He moans into the kiss, hands sweeping up to be buried in Fili’s hair, gripping, dragging him nearer. Hands scrabble at laces and ties, breaths coming in pants as they race to get closer, to _be_ closer; only breaking apart for as long as it takes to remove a shirt; too afraid that if they stop now then none of this will be real. 

They fall to the floor, Kili reaching out a hand to drag through the paint soaked palette on the desk as they go. He wants to leave prints and marks all over Fili’s body, wants to paint his own map of love across Fili’s skin. Wants to paint every word he can’t say in splashes of colour; in drops of cobalt, pewter, vermillion. 

 _I love you’s_ are ghosted across collar bones with a touch of lips on skin, are heard in every gasp, felt in every caress. They move together, hands tangling as they fight to map out the last 8 years in this one moment.

Kili lets his hands roam, desperate to cover every inch of Fili in what is familiar, in what is _home._

The colours shift as muscles ripple, the sight more beautiful than anything he’s ever created before. For Fili is his masterpiece, his only canvas that’s ever-changing and unpredictable. 

And as his moans fill the studio around them, deep and soft and _here,_ he thinks that if he could never raise a brush again, it would be worth it for this. 

 


End file.
